Hermione's Homecoming
by CharlesTheBold
Summary: Back home in London, Hermione tries to take stock of a traumatic year at Hogwarts.  One-shot.   Please Review.


**Hermione's Homecoming**

_(Disclaimer: I have no business connection with HARRY POTTER. My only purpose in writing this story is to have fun and maybe share it)_

_(Author's note: this story is set just after the end of CHAMBER OF SECRETS.)_

Part I The Parents

It was rare for Mr. And Mrs. Granger to simply close their dentistry office, outside of holidays. Usually, when one had to be away, the other would keep seeing patients. But today was a special occasion: their daughter Minnie was coming back from her second year at school. And so both parents were standing on platform 9 at King's Cross Station, pretending not to notice the oddly dressed people around them.

"I say?" said a young woman, walking up to the dentists. She looked comparatively normal, except that she had dyed her hair purple for some reason. "Can you direct me to the Lost Luggage office?"

"Hmmm," said Mrs Granger, trying to remember. "It's up those stairs, then across that bridge, then take the lift down to the ground level—"

"It's confusing," said the girl, shaking her head. "Could you show me the way?"

The Grangers looked at the girl in surprise, because she didn't look at all like the type to be confused by simple directions. Then Mr. Granger caught on.

"It's all right – we know about the barrier. Our daughter is coming down from school on the Express. You don't need to distract us away." He was careful not to use odd words like "Hogwarts" or "9-and-three-quarters" just in case his theory was wrong and the purple-haired girl was a real Muggle.

The girl looked relieved. "Thank Merlin. Yes, I was assigned to try to keep Muggles away from the barrier so they wouldn't see people walking through the column. Might freak them out. You won't tell anybody I mucked up on this occasion, will you?"

"We won't say a word."

"Ta very much. Name's Tonks, by the way. Training to be an Auror – that's sort of a wizard bobby."

"Good luck. But I'm curious about something," Mrs. Granger said. "You were able to tell Muggles like us apart from wizards? How?"

"I could tell you, but then I'd have to obliviate you. Pardon me, there's some more Muggles to handle over there. Ta-ta." She slipped out of sight, which took some doing, because that purple hair should have been visible at quite a distance.

The Grangers turned to the column. Already children were filing through. Apparently the whole student body caught the train the same day, except for those who didn't have to go through London, so there were numerous students coming out.

They were going to see Minnie for the first time since early fall. This year, unlike the first one, she had elected to stay at school during the Christmas holidays. Her reasons had not been clear to her parents: she had sent a letter saying vaguely that she had a research project she wanted to do, and they couldn't ring her up to ask more questions because the school had no phone service. So they were eager to see her now.

Finally they watched their Minnie come through, with a couple of boys the same age, one with vivid red hair, the other small, with unruly hair and glasses. They were Ron Weasley and Harry Potter, whom the Grangers had met several months earlier in Diagon Alley. Minnie gave each boy a big hug, after which a big fat man walked up and dragged Harry away.

Minnie spotted her parents and walked up to them to give them a hug. Last year she had RUN up to them, but Mrs. Granger supposed that she had learnt to be more stiff-upper-lippish this year. It made her a bit sad.

"Let me help you carry your stuff , Minnie."

"Thanks, Dad." She started to hand over a package, but it slipped out of her hand and fell to the floor. "Damn."

was somewhat startled to hear Minnie swear, something she rarely did before, but supposed that it was inevitable that she would pick up the habit from other kids. What really worried her was what she heard Minnie mumble as she bent to pick the package. "- still not coordinated yet—"

"Not coordinated? Minnie, have you been ill?"

"It's all right, Mum."

"HAVE YOU?"

"Yes, Mum, but I'm okay now."

"I wish you'd told us."

"It was – a wizard illness, Mum. You couldn't have helped."

Minnie clearly didn't want to talk about it. Mrs. Granger decided to drop the matter for the moment, not wanting to harangue her daughter the instant she got home, but she was determined to bring up the subject again later.

Minnie was very quiet as they drove home, staring out of the car window. Last year she had bubbled over with all the things she had discovered at Hogwarts – she had seen a dragon, and a centaur. Witches really did ride broomsticks, though they considered it a traditional sport, rather like horse riding in the Muggle world. This time she was silent.

Maybe she had found all the wonders already, the first year. Or maybe she was just tired from the Hogwarts Express trip, which might be a lingering effect of illness. Her mother privately wondered if they should take her to a doctor for a check-up. Did the wizard "healers" understand modern medicine?

Or, Mrs. Granger thought, there may be a quite natural explanation. Puberty! The changes that accompanied puberty could be upsetting for many girls, and might be especially so for Minnie, who disdained "girl talk" and spent an amazing amount of time with two boys, who wouldn't understand the changes. Mrs. Granger decided to ask Minnie about this, but in privacy. It might embarrass Minnie for her father to be part of the conversation.

And although she could not share her concerns with her husband without Minnie overhearing, Mr. Granger had clearly noticed Minnie's odd mood as well. They had talked earlier about taking their daughter to a fancy restaurant to celebrate her homecoming, but now he drove the car straight to their home in the environs of London.

Mrs. Granger cooked dinner for the three of them, with some help from her husband. They made a joke about it being a great improvement over school food, but it fell flat. Minnie remarked that food at Hogwarts was delicious, and when she added diplomatically that her mother's cookery was better, it sounded like a mechanical attempt at politeness.

During dinner Mrs. Granger made a final attempt at conversation. "I suppose it's very romantic, living in a centuries-old castle. But it cuts you off from the life of the city. You don't even have cinemas up there, do you? Or museums? I hope you're able to get out a lot this summer."

"I suppose so, Mum."

Minnie had scarcely been listening. When, at the conclusion of the meal, she asked permission to go to her room, the parents gave it. There seemed no point in trying to make conversation anymore.

Part II. Hermione

Hermione was relieved to get into the privacy of her own room. At Hogwarts privacy was hard to come by – she shared her dorm room with Lavender, Parvati, and two other girls, and when she wasn't with them, she was with Harry and Ron. There was even an occasion where she had stopped by a bathroom to pee, and had been startled by the appearance of Moaning Myrtle. But now she relished being alone, because she had important things to think about. Hermione was disoriented, with crucial weeks missing from her life. It was a very strange feeling, for a girl who liked being in control, and much more unpleasant than the occasional lingering lack of coorination. One moment she had been walking in the school corridor with Penny Clearwater, discussing possible strategies for dealing with the Chamber Monster, when the monster attacked. The next thing she knew, she was awakening in the infirmary and the crisis was over. Harry had killed the monster. The underlying mystery had been solved – the monster's master had been Voldemort, using poor Ginny Weasley as a tool. Lockhart had been exposed as a fraud. All the new knowledge was a shock that was taking time to absorb. But leaving Hogwarts for the first time in nearly nine months had helped her see the year in perspective.

Even last year, she had discovered dark things about the wizard world, things she hadn't told her parents. Getting attacked by a troll. Confronting a watchdog from Hell ( she suspected it was literally from Hell, that it was the dog Cerberus from Greek mythology, though Hagrid called it Fluffy). Quirrel trying to knock Harry off his broom, high above the ground. Ron getting beaten up by a chess queen.

But, back then, all the darkness could be traced back to Quirrel and his master Voldemort. Outsiders in a world of wonders. Snakes in the Garden of Eden. It hadn't affected her fascination with the wizard world itself.

This year had been different.

There was racism in the Wizard World, though their notion of races were different. To racist wizards, there were pure-bloods and there were Muggle-borns. To them Hermione was a Muggle-born – and what was worse, a Muggle-born that did better than any of the pure-bloods in "their" school. Draco Malfoy hated her, but Draco was just the tip of the iceberg. Far worse was Salazar Slytherin, who had actually trained his basilisk to target Muggles, and yet was important enough in Wizard culture to have a Hogwarts House named after him. She had to wonder if they had known the creature was real.

Then there was Cornelius Fudge, Minister for Magic, who had sent Hagrid to Azkaban on mere suspicion of being responsible for the monster – after all, the clumsy giant, the only person of his type at Hogwarts, made a good scapegoat.

Though Voldemort, in his Tom Riddle form, had exploited the monster and framed Hagrid, she couldn't blame everything on the Dark Lord this time. He had simply exploited problems that already existed in the Wizard World.

Had Hermione made a mistake, trying to join the Wizard World? If so, was it too late to undo it? Her closest friends had particular reasons to stick with Hogwarts: to Harry it was a refuge from his horrid Muggle relatives; to Ron it was a family tradition that he was expected to follow. Hermione had nothing forcing her to attend Hogwarts, and she thought that she was clever enough to succeed as a Muggle girl.

But the problems were not all external, part of the Wizard world. Hermione had to face up to her own flaws.

Halfway through the year, she had accidentally turned herself into a cat while trying to brew Polyjuice Potion. The brewing was against the rules, but it had seemed a good idea at the time. Had she been caught out, she might have been expelled, a fate Hermione considered almost worse than death. But Harry and Ron had smuggled her to the infirmary, and Madame Pomfrey had been amazingly willing to conceal the details of what had happened, reporting only that Hermione was ill. The healer eventually explained to Hermione that she had experimented with dangerous medicines in her younger days, with at least one dangerous result, so she sympathized with Hermione, and merely made her swear not to brew Polyjuice again. She also made Hermione swear not to repeat the healer's confidence to anybody, not even Harry or Ron.

And there had been her crush on Prof. Gilderoy Lockhart, which had blinded her to his vanity and deceitfulness. At the end he had been exposed as an utter fraud, who had not only stolen credit for other wizards' accomplishments but put them under spells to prevent them from setting the record straight. Hermione, who had boasted to Harry about her powers of logic the previous year, couldn't believe that she had been so gullible. Fortunately Harry and Ron, who had seen through him from the beginning, refrained from saying I-told-you-so. They were just happy to see their beloved friend alive and well again.

Too, there had been the matter of Ginny, Ron's kid sister. Ginny had been hit by culture shock and homesickness this year, her first, and had been too embarrassed to seek advice. The odd thing was that though she was surrounded by older brothers – Ron, Fred, George, and Percy – not one of them seemed to have noticed anything wrong. To be sure, boys were not allowed in the girls' dorm, not even to visit their sisters. But Hermione lived in the same dorm, though not the same bedroom. Why hadn't she noticed something wrong with Ginny? Perhaps because she had made it on her own the previous year, and expected other girls to manage just as easily. Or perhaps she was too fond of books to notice merely human matters.

She was not going to solve problems by pulling out of Hogwarts. She would be taking her problems with her. And, quite frankly, she couldn't imagine living without Harry and Ron in her life.

Maybe she was brooding too much. She was after all changing physically, growing breasts and starting to have periods. She had heard the emotions also changed when one hit puberty, plus it was a natural time to wonder what the rest of one's life would be like.

Brooding itself never solved anything. Brooding followed by action would. Hermione was, as Ron had once complained, a "bossy know-it-all", an aggressive and clever girl. At least she had summer hols in which to think things through. She would go back to Hogwarts next year, determined to conquer the wizard world.

THE END

_(Note: In the US Hermione's parents would be both addressed as Dr. Granger. I am following the British custom where medical practitioners are addressed as Mr. or Mrs.)_

_(Note: the story about Madame Pomfrey was my own invention. I thought an explanation was needed as to how Hermione escaped being punished for experimenting with Polyjuice Potion._


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